The veteran guard's exile, which began in the wake of his New Year's night outburst at Denver coach Brian Shaw, has gone on long enough.

It's time for all involved to agree that professionalism, pragmatism and forgiveness all add up to mean Miller should be back in a Denver uniform and on the Nuggets' bench — as soon as Friday night against Toronto.

It would be a letdown if Ty Lawson's minor shoulder injury prevented him from playing on "Ty Lawson Wobblehead Night," but it could happen. More important for long-range planning, Nate Robinson might miss the rest of the season with an ACL injury.

Short of giving a tryout to Avalanche wunderkind Nathan MacKinnon, the Canadian teenager who loves playing basketball almost as much as he does hockey, and suiting him up against his beloved Raptors on a one-game emergency contract, the course of action was — and still is — obvious.

It's Andre Miller.

During the mercurial Nuggets' "ups," it has been fashionable to say Miller's absence, at least from the rotation and possibly from the bench and dressing room, was addition by subtraction. By now, though, it's obvious that this shakily constructed and obviously mediocre team's problems have little to do with a veteran backup point guard.

Shaw and Miller don't have to be going to dinner in LoDo after the games. They need to be pros, to accept the inevitability of disagreement and the prideful desire of a 37-year-old point guard to play — which should be fairly easy for Shaw to sympathize with, given he was a 37-year-old point guard when he retired as a player in 2003. Miller crossed the line of tolerable conduct with his insubordination, but it's mendable. Or at least it should be.